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Album To Check Out: Mexrrissey - 'No Manchester'

Mexrrissey add a Mexican energy and Spanish lingual twist to the Morrissey covers that make up their debut album 'No Manchester'.
There are interesting ways of redefining music through interpretation. You can give it an ironic twist like every second-rate punk goes pop song (including Say Anything’s 'Baby I Got You Money', a cover by a band I loved – before gradually learning to ignore through the decline – that was so unpalatable in its insistence of weak rap, and replacing racial vocabulary with the phrase ‘the n word’), or you can fuck it up like Celine Dion with every song she’s attempted, or you can hide the fact you’ve covered others work and deny it (this is the Madonna route) or you can full-on own it, like Elliott Smith did repeatedly, or like Mexrrissey do with 'No Manchester'.

This isn’t an entirely new concept on both fronts. The Bronx took their own songs and gave them a latin twist with Mariachi El Bronx, and it seems that everybody knows somebody who has started a Smiths/Morrissey cover band (even James Franco has one). But Mexrrissey are unapologetic in their style, going as far as translating the songs and ignoring a need for a rhyme scheme.

The record itself is a beautiful white with the Mexican flag colours scattered across it like some sort of Jackson Pollack (side note: anybody remember when everyone thought they could give that style a go? My dad bought a giant sheet, a bunch of paint and flailed like a madman trying to create a sort of art. It was shit).

The world is a better place when there are bands like Mexrrissey subverting expectations. Perhaps this calls for a France New – all French covers of Brand New. Or Missy Elliott Smith – speaks for itself. Or Rushia – this name I’m proud of. Mexrrissey are great, and they are pioneers in that sense, although I’d have suggested that Morrico was maybe a catchier name.